I’ve finally managed to fire up the original Protek 608 software on an old Dell Inspiron 8100 I found stowed at the office. My previous attempts to run this software failed on Windows 8 and 10, and there’s very little information about how this software looks and operates (it’s quite niche). I decided that it […]

As detailed in a previous post, the physical communications layer is RS-232 – 9600 baud, 7, N, 1. So we know how to correctly connect the the multimeter and handle the data transfer, but how is the data interpreted? What’s the language or meaning? In this post I detail all of this, starting with the […]

This is following on from my previous post introducing the Protek 608 multimeter and my software project. In this post I detail the communications hardware, an important consideration for future development. The Protek 608 uses an RS-232 connection to allow for interfacing with a PC. This is a very common connection that most DMMs used. […]

The Protek 608 is a 5000 count digital multimeter made by Hung Chang, who have since changed their name to GS Instruments. I’ve owned one of these since about 2009. This multimeter is now discontinued and no longer available new, although they occasionally show up on the second-hand market from forums and eBay. This DMM […]

I’ve used an infrared thermometer at work for a while now and find it a great tool in many situations. However I felt that there is still room for improvement. I’d like to see better sampling modes, live trend graph, and even USB data logging. There are some tools that have some of these features, […]

After posting my project I had a number of questions online. I thought this is a good opportunity to update the blog to share more information on this project. GUI concepts I’ve made some more progress on the software side of things, mostly just playing around with the graphics display. The Nokia 3310 LCD screen […]

This is a project I started about a week or so ago and have been working on when I find time after work. It’s a GPS and compass that temporarily uses an Arduino Nano micro-controller, Nokia 3310 screen, EM-406A SiRF III GPS receiver, and a simple (non-tilt compensated) magnetometer for compass heading. It’s obviously in […]

Please note this is an alpha release. Version 0.3.0 is still under development use with caution! 😉 If you find jGauge useful a link back to the home page jgauge.com or my blog dariancabot.com is appreciated. See the main project page for more information and downloads. Getting Started Include these files in the head of […]

jGauge is a 100% JavaScript dial gauge I created to be a free, lightweight, and powerful alternative to Flash-based gauges. It can be used on web based dashboards like a speedometer / fuel gauge. Code base Google code (archive): https://code.google.com/p/jgauge/ Github (future development): https://github.com/dariancabot/jGauge Screenshot Changelog Version 0.4.0 – 20110511 Now hosted on GitHub Version […]